Huffines Institute Director's Blog

If you didn’t see it, the U.S. Marathon Olympic Trials were held this past Saturday morning in Houston (the TV replay was on Saturday afternoon). Experts say that we may have the strongest overall Olympic marathon team that we’ve ever had – but there is no guarantee that we’ll win any medals in this event because the Kenyans and Ethiopians have truly dominated distance running over the past 10 years. Before you shake your head and turn to the next article, hav...

Having family in Cleveland, I watch the Browns play so I can at least sympathize with my long-suffering family who are all fans of the Browns. Maybe you caught the Brown’s Thursday night game on Dec. 8 against the playoff-bound Pittsburgh Steelers. This is and has been a huge rivalry game (at least for the Brown’s fans) and there was a lot of pride riding on it for the Browns. If you know the story, skip to the next paragraph…otherwise, let’s set-up the situation. Colt McCoy is the Brown’s ...

I normally consider myself a fairly rational and logical person – that’s part of my job description as a scientist – but when it comes to sports, it seems that my rational and logical side gets kicked to the curb. Mobs looting and burning in the wake of their favorite team losing, or mobs rushing the field and trampling others when their team wins seem to indicate that I’m not the only one that loses my rationality when ‘my’ team is involved. And certainly, with all of the machinations/anx...

This week has seen plenty of ‘off-the-field’ sports drama and tragedy. Recognizing that is has been a horrible week in the sports world (especially in college sports), it is important to remember that we normally look to sports for entertainment and to escape from our concerns of everyday life. If f you want that type of sports drama (the ‘on-the-field’ type), there’s no better place to look this weekend than the last NASCAR race of the year from Homestead, FL on Sunday.

Everyone talks about 'reaching the masses', but rarely do you have a chance to do so. At the Huffines Institute, we are thrilled because our local newspaper - The Eagle - has agreed to start porting the content from our website to their website to a new Health section. They are starting with this blog, and will gradually port over the other content over the next couple of months. I'm noting this because it is important that 'we' all talk - I'm using the universal '...

This past weekend, I had the pleasure and honor to represent the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) at the Coca-Cola Track Walk at Texas Motor Speedway after one of the NASCAR races. If you’re not familiar with this program, in essence, Coca-Cola rents the racetrack and encourages NASCAR fans to come out and walk around the track (the Texas track is 1.5 miles around). Coke provides entertainment (and sometimes food) and they usually have a couple of the “Coke Drivers” show up and tal...

In many of our podcasts, articles, and some of my past blogs, the Huffines Institute continues to advocate getting people active. Many times we will use the phrase ‘moderately active’ which is generally interpreted to mean getting at least 30 cumulative mins of activity on a daily basis at a moderate intensity level. Indeed, many studies that have shown positive health effects from daily activity will often use the “30 mins of moderate activity” as a guideline/recommendation. What we forget ...

An individual diagnosed with a neurocognitive disease like Parkinson’s often face a difficult future, with their quality of life marked by difficult physical symptoms, including uncontrollable tremors. Often these tremors make walking, writing, and other movements that many of us take for granted, difficult, if not impossible. Pharmacological treatments for these tremors and other Parkinson’s symptoms work well, at least in the short term, but eventually, the brain adapts to these drugs and th...

The racing world suffered a tremendous loss yesterday when Dan Wheldon was killed during an Indy Car race at Las Vegas Motorspeedway. Even though auto racing in general is much safer than it was just 10 years ago, it is still tragic when one of a sport’s athletes loses their life while competing. Because I have a background in auto racing and my lab has done quite a bit of testing of auto racing drivers and pit crews, this type of tragedy hits a little closer to home and always m...

It seems that there are times when popular literature seems to be all writing about the same thing (or maybe they all feed off each other?). At any rate, it seems that now is such a time with several popular books addressing whether performance and success is a result of inherent talent or practice and perseverance. Books like Bounce, The Talent Code, and Outliers all propose that inherent characteristics are not very important in determining final success. Rather, these authors would contend th...